Lean engineering and manufacturing tools and processes use three-dimensional Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD) models (henceforth referred to as “CAD solid models”) of the complex products that are being created or improved. Lean engineering and manufacturing tools and processes have been shown to significantly improve the design, development, and support of complex products. Lean engineering and manufacturing techniques have been effective tools for creating complex products from scratch. However, the non-recurring costs of converting a legacy drawing based product into CAD solid models, to enable lean engineering techniques, is cost prohibitive.
For example, a retrofit upgrade for an aircraft is much less expensive when the retrofit is solid-modeled on computer and analyzed by all parties of the retrofit process before the part or change is performed. However, if no CAD solid model exists for the aircraft, there is a significant non-recurring cost in attaining those solid models. This cost could be more than the cost of the retrofit.
Therefore, there exists a need for a process to re-engineer existing complex products in a CAD solid model framework in order to apply lean engineering techniques.